At least 700 employees in India are let go by Goldman Sachs as it launches a significant round of global layoffs.

On Wednesday and Thursday, hundreds of employees of Goldman Sachs, a central Wall Street bank, were let go as the company started laying off as many as 3,200 people globally. It is believed that 700 to 800 employees of the company who worked in India were let go due to the restructuring, one of the biggest for the business since the 2008 financial crisis.

Several senior employees, including those at the vice-president level, were also affected by the layoffs, which were primarily undertaken to reduce costs in the face of economic headwinds like high inflation, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Close to 9,000 of the company’s employees in India were working out of its Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Mumbai offices before the layoffs, so the restructuring impacted almost 9% of them.

 People who were working remotely were contacted via Zoom and fired. The employees claimed that those in the office were summoned for a brief meeting and were told they had been fired. They claim that they were escorted out of the building after that without giving them a chance to return to their desks.

“Right after being informed that I was being fired, I was escorted out of the building and asked to go home. I couldn’t even say bye to my friends,” said one person, who was employed as a software developer at Goldman’s Bengaluru office.